


lucky me (lucky we)

by amosanguis



Series: soul-bond/soulmates AUs [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Feels, But she's trying okay, Clint tries too but he probably shouldn't, Established Relationship, Gen, Happy Ending, Natasha doesn't know how to deal with Steve's feelings, OTP: No Not Without You, Overuse Of Parentheses, Soul Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Skips, short scenes, title from a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 00:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2328854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve wakes up, the colors around him are muted and washed out – if he tries hard enough, he can pretend they’re not there at all.</p><p> </p><p>Soulmate AU where people see in black and white until they meet their soulmate; if their soulmate dies, they no longer see colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lucky me (lucky we)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Brooklyn (Go Hard)" by Jay Z ft. Santigold.

-z-

 

When Steve wakes up, the colors around him are muted and washed out – if he tries hard enough, he can pretend they’re not there at all.

 

-x-

 

Bucky’s been dead for two and a half weeks and Steve keeps an eye out for a way to join him (again and more permanently).

 

-x-

 

Steve’s in the middle of telling Stark that he will absolutely _not_ be moving into the Tower when suddenly everything explodes into color.  He stops mid-sentence and gasps, clutches at the suddenly too-tight feeling in his chest as a sob wracks through his body – a viscous and bone-deep agony filling him up and choking him.

“Cap?  Cap!” Tony is yelling – Tony whose skin is suddenly lightly tanned and whose goatee is brown-black flecked with silver and whose eyes have gone from dark grey to a bright brown.  Tony’s yelling for JARVIS to run diagnostics as he grabs at Steve’s arms to steady him.

“Don’t touch me!” Steve finally shouts, is finally able to get away from Tony’s hands.  Every touch burning him, making his muscles jump and spasm.  Steve’s body was rebelling against him was fighting for him to _run_ – but Steve didn’t know where he was supposed to go, didn’t know how he was supposed to get there.

(Not when his eyes were lying to him, not when his brain was telling him that there were colors everywhere.  Not when Steve’s world wasn’t supposed to have colors anymore.)

He hears JARVIS talking to Tony, but he only catches a few words.  “Panic attack” and “bond” and “symptoms of separation.”

The last thing he remembers is vomiting at Tony’s feet.

 

-x-

 

The colors begin to fade sixteen-and-a-half hours later.

Steve screams into his pillow.

(Fury calls off his search for anyone who may have come into contact with Rogers, who may have set him off.

Steve had wanted to tell him to not even bother.  Steve’s heart was buried under seventy years of snow and ice at the foot of a European mountain.)

 

-x-

 

They try to put him on suppressants and Steve tells the doctors that if they come near him with those pills again, he won’t be responsible for his actions.  They back away quickly.

(He hears howling wind in his ears and feels ice settling in his spine.)

Bruce comes up to him after, says, “Sometimes, the mind plays tricks.  Thinks the bond is still healthy and it – it tries to put the link back online, so to speak.  That includes inducing all of the pains of long-distance separation—”

“I’m not taking those pills,” Steve cuts in.  Bruce tries to smile (he fails, it comes out as a grimace) before he nods and quietly walks away.

 

-x-

 

Bucky’s been dead for six weeks; Steve ignores the people who tell him it's been so much longer.

 

-x-

 

It happens again in the middle of a mission.  Steve keeps from screaming until he’s managed to take down his marks.

He tells Natasha and Clint he’s going offline and before they can respond, he’s yanking his earpiece out and tearing the helmet off his head.  He falls to his knees and he screams into the too-green grass.

When they find him, Steve can hear their shocked gasps and pained mutterings.  They try to pick him up, to help him to the plane – but a violent seizure takes him and they don’t have time to step back.

(Clint gets a broken arm and shattered nose; Nat’s shoulder is dislocated.  Steve never stopped screaming.)

 

-x-

 

The colors last for thirty-seven hours.

Afterwards, when he can move again – he lets the doctors give him a bottle of pills.  He holds out for an hour before he’s flushing them down the toilet.

 

-x-

 

He can see that Clint wants to ask.  Wants to know if it was the legendary Peggy Carter or if it was some girl who was never in the history books.  But, Natasha always manages to cut him off before he ever gets the words out.

 

-x-

 

Bucky’s been dead two years, three months, one week, and two days.  Steve buries himself in his missions and tells himself that he can maybe move on so long as the world’s colors stay muted.

 

-x-

 

The third time it happens, Steve simply wakes up to it.  He doesn’t hurt so much this time around, more like a simple ache that settles deep in his muscles and all he wants to do is curl into himself and sleep.

(He closes his eyes, pretends he feels fingers in his hair and breath on his neck.  He pretends that, if he opens his eyes right now, he’ll see rich blue eyes looking right back at him, that he’ll see red-pink lips smirking over at him, that he’ll see dark hair sticking out in every direction.

He opens his eyes and tries not to be disappointed.)

He rolls out of bed and forces himself into his day – he needs to talk to Fury about all those secrets he's been keeping.

 

-x-

 

The man on the roof – the man with the dead blue eyes and dark hair – something in Steve’s blood _sings_ at the sight of him. 

Steve almost doesn’t notice how for those precious few seconds, his bones didn’t ache anymore. (He doesn’t know what to do with that or what it means.)

 

-x-

 

Rumlow’s eyes are harsher in color – brighter and colder and Steve reads the betrayal in them without needing all of the other signs of the fight to come.

Fighting in color, though, it invigorates him. 

His brain’s little trick, its little _coping mechanism_ , it fills him with rage – brings up every memory of when he had Bucky hot and breathing and vibrant by his side, of when Bucky walked next to him, cradling his sniper rifle in his arms.  The bright red of Rumlow’s blood – on the floor, on the walls, on Steve’s fist – it pushes him to fighting that much harder.

(It’s a feeling that Steve’s afraid he may be relishing in a little too much.)

But then he has more guns than he knows he can fight trained on him and so he runs.  Takes his bike and flies down the bridge.  And as he fights his way back home – through the barriers and through the bullets and through the fighter jet – he feels lighter than he has since he woke up; giddy and high off the striking color around him.

 

-x-

 

He hates the way Natasha carefully moves around him – as if ready for him to break.  He just sighs though, follows the bright redness of her hair out of the corner of his eye.

Once they’re out of D.C., though, the pain starts.

Steve grits his teeth and ignores the only logical reason behind that.

Because Bucky’s not in D.C. – Bucky’s at the bottom of a fucking mountain in Europe, he’s long dead and Steve just wants all of these goddamned colors _gone_.  He slams the truck to a stop, feeling his bones begin to shake as bile rises in his throat.

Natasha drives them the rest of the way.

 

-x-

 

He finally stops shaking-trembling-vomiting once they’re back in D.C. and meet up with Sam.  Then they’re driving with Sitwell in the back and Steve’s blood is suddenly singing again – then Sitwell is ripped from the car.  Natasha dives over the seat and into his lap, pulls his head into her chest and pushes Sam with her foot just in time to knock them from the path of rapidly fired bullets.

“Shit!” Sam yells as the steering wheel is ripped from his hands.

Steve grabs him and Natasha, pushes the door out and bails – he loses Sam and he has just enough time to stand up and push Nat out of the way of the oncoming grenade.

 

-x-

 

The Winter Soldier, Nat had called him, is the one who’s making Steve’s blood sing and there’s coiled tension in his gut that pushes him faster and harder into their fight.

And Steve remembers all of the talk of the possibilities of finding a second someone and Steve’s desperate because he _doesn’t want one_ , so he fights the Soldier – pushes him back and goes in for the kill, desperate to make it end to get back to his world of muted and faded colors.

Then the Soldier’s mask is falling away.

The colors around him burn impossibly bright – the sky’s blue, the oranges and yellows of the fires, the red of the star against the silver of metal – and Steve’s world crashes down around him.

“Bucky?” he breathes and he finally understands.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the Soldier asks, takes a step forward.  But it’s hesitant and Steve sees a flash of something in his eyes and Steve wants to move forward, wants to scream and pull Bucky close.

Then Sam dives in from the air and Natasha fires a grenade and then the Soldier’s disappearing into the smoke.

 

-x-

 

“Your soulmate is the goddamned Winter Soldier?” Fury demands, lifting an eyebrow.  Then he shakes his head as if disappointed, says, “I’d expect shit like this out of Stark, but not you, Rogers.”

“We were bonded before,” Steve starts, wants to say _before we were even teenagers, before we ever went to war, before either of us died_ ; he waves his hand, finishes with, “before.”  Then he closes his eyes, puts his head in his hands.

He feels Sam’s hand on his shoulder, thinks he feels Sam’s strength seeping into the muscles there.

“If it comes down to it,” Fury asks and Steve looks up, “can you do what needs to be done?”

Steve doesn’t answer.

 

-x-

 

On their way to base, the colors fade and Steve starts to panic.  Half-an-hour later, they’re back and Steve fights between relief and panic again.

 

-x-

 

Bucky’s supposed to be dead. 

And as Steve looks at the Soldier, at his dead eyes and the bullet holes in his own gut and he wonders if, on some level, Bucky’s still dead.  If it’s just his body that’s up and moving around.

But the Soldier is staring at Steve, his eyes brighten as he looks over Steve’s uniform at the shield disappearing into the Potomac below, at the blood dripping down Steve’s face.

He still tackles Steve to the glass, screams and punches.  But, when it comes to that last blow and he just stops, Steve watches and he can _see_ the moment when Bucky wakes up.  Then he’s falling and he doesn’t think to stop himself.

 

-x-

 

Steve wakes and he’s still surrounded by colors.  He’s cold and wet and, when he looks up – he sees Bucky (not the Soldier, but _Bucky_ ) curled around him and Bucky’s long hair is dripping, tickling Steve’s cheeks.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve coughs.

“Idiot,” Bucky says and Steve think he feels Bucky’s chest hiccup (Steve’s propped up in Bucky’s lap, between his splayed legs, and Bucky’s got his arms around his chest with a hand against Steve’s wounds).

There’s a helicopter closing in on them and Steve wonders if it’s Fury or the media or the police. 

(He doesn’t care.  Bucky’s curled around him and the world around him is bright with color and the blood he hasn’t lost is still singing.)

“Your friends,” Bucky says, his voice hoarse – he moves his face away from Steve’s and looks into the sky.

Steve’s hand comes up and he grips Bucky’s sleeve, “Don’t go anywhere.  Please.”

 

-x-

 

As Steve’s loaded into the helicopter and flown to the hospital – he doesn’t let go of Bucky.  Bucky doesn’t let go of him either.

 

-z-

 

End.


End file.
